This Black Book Is Worth A Peek
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What can I say; Paul Verhooven has proven me wrong. How, you may ask? Because he’s probably the only director with enough guts to make this kind of film. And in doing so has shown that he commands cinema like a fierce conductor; without fear or limit. I had to remind myself that this is the man behind Basic Instinct, Hollow Man, and Showgirls. He has also done RoboCop, Total Recall, and The 4th Victim, which were not bad. But nothing prepared me for Black Book, an absolutely brilliant film that dares us to hold on for dear life and gives us a story that challenges as well as entertains.
The film starts off in the 50s in a small town in Israel. A bus full of Dutch tourists stop for a quick spell. A woman from that group recognizes a woman who lives there. It turns out they knew each other from The War. The rest of the film is in flashback to the war, but this scene is important for several reasons, the biggest is to assure the audience that no matter what happens in the film, these two women will survive. That is something that we’ll need to know later on.
Then we are taken back to 1945, it’s near the end of the war and Holland’s Jews are holding their breaths waiting for word about the Allies. Amongst those is Rachel played by Carice van Houten. She’s the daughter of a rich Jew who has taken up residence in a house full of Christians. To eat, she has to memorize a verse from the bible. She tries to keep her neck down and not cause attention to be drawn on her. But when a stray bomb kills the family she is staying with, she is forced into making a run for it. Her family’s lawyer sets her and her family up to be taken to neutral territory, but are discovered enroute. The boat’s cargo are all killed, except for her. She slips off the boat and watches as the Nazis plunder the dead Jews. Infuriated, she decides to join a radical resistance movement whose intent is to infiltrate the Nazi headquarters. During a standard mission, Rachel finds herself cornered with the Nazi commander himself. Not knowing she’s a Jew, he starts hitting on her. When the resistance sees an opportunity in this, they order her to be his mistress in order to but the headquarters. She does so, but in the process, she finds herself starting to become attracted to him. But when circumstances has some of her comrades arrested for gun smuggling, events lead her to being considered a double-crosser on both sides, and her lover to be a Jew sympathizer (which it turns out that he really is in a way). And that’s when the war ends and the real trouble begin.
Black Book is a Hitchcock thriller that Hitchcock would have been afraid to tell. It’s willing to look at Nazis objectively without the automatic stamp of evil. The film that came closest to attempting this was Wolfgang Peterson’s brilliant Das Boot. Not to say that Nazis are good, but we are given a Nazi that is disillusioned by the rhetoric, who knows that Germany cannot win and only wants to do his part to end things with the least amount of bloodshed. Is it possible that a high-ranking Nazi would be like this? Yes, but highly unlikely. But the film isn’t trying for historical accuracy as it is about these two people put in the worst-case scenario imaginable. This isn’t a film out to stir controversy, but entertain with its superior storytelling and incredible performances.
The film lives or dies on Ms. Van Houten’s performance, which she gives in spades. The character is juicy enough to begin with considering that she’s caught between two very delicate forces that could crush her if she’s not careful. Watch as she plays the parts asked of her from both sides, and yet she never turns into the people she’s portraying, but still being affected by the consequences. Take the scene where she gets involved in a botched murder plot
But the real star is Paul Verhooven, who shows mastery in this film that I didn’t think he had in him. His shots are beautiful, well composed and extremely well blocked. This filmmaker has been better known by his exploitations than his skill, and while there is a urination scene that some might see as going too far, I don’t because it is meant to get you behind a character instead of punishing them. Later this year, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution took a swipe at the same idea and came off hollow.
All in all, this is a great thriller worthy of your attention. And it just goes to show that some directors have hidden resources that just need the right conditions to bloom (Eli Roth, I’m looking at you). But the problem is that Verhooven is now playing at a different level now and cannot creep down to his usual gutter any more. And for a quick moment, I find that to be sad. But then I pinch myself and rejoice for one of the best thrillers ever filmed.
Posted
Wednesday, May 07, 2008 1:03 AM
Well done!